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Mozart, Tesla and Creativity
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In the previous century, psychologists and cognitive scientists made repeated attempts to demystify the creative process of scientific geniuses with only modest success. The speaker accidentally found that it is possible to understand the common thought process of Mozart and Tesla by combining knowledge in cognitive science and basic concepts of artificial intelligence. The predicament of past psychologists stemmed from the lack of a practical human model to contrast with geniuses. The opposite of a genius is neither an idiot nor an ordinary intelligent folk, but, rather, a peculiar product of the late 20th century: They are rule-abiding high achievers. These high-achievers are highly adept in solving known problems with well-defined solutions, much like an inexperienced cook, who blindly follows a cookbook recipe (rule-based reasoning; verbal thinking). In a way, it is similar to digital computers' algorithm. They could neither improvise nor "put two and two together" to arrive at novel solutions. When a problem falls outside of the range covered by the book, they become utterly helpless. In contrast, geniuses were often thinking in terms of pictures, and they relied on picture-inspired analogy, rather than word-inspired analogy (picture-based reasoning; visual thinking). They could readily recognize solutions, which might not be obvious to others. It was not how much they had known but rather how well they could connect solutions to a problem. In this talk, I shall use real examples to let the audience experience the two modes of reasoning. Experts often overlooked simple solutions to a hard problem primarily because they could not jump out of the box, due to dogmatism. Conventional wisdom regards geniuses as a gift of Nature, and treated an individual's intelligence as immutable. However, it was found that adverse environmental factors imposed by the current American educational system's dumbing-down policies might be just as important. In reality, intelligence is a mental habit, and is hard, but not impossible, to change. I found that student's intellectual performance improved after they had learned to practice visual thinking. The most dramatic case took effects in merely 5 minutes. Whether such an induced change or learned strategy will last depends on diligent practices afterward. Time permitting, the implication to machine intelligence (e-intelligence) will also be discussed.
Selected References:
- Hong, F. T. (2006): Tesla composed like Mozart (Tesla je komponovao kao Mocart), NIN (НИН) No. 2910 (5.10.2006), pp. 34-35.
- Hong, F. T. (2006), The enigma of human creativity: Hidden messages from Nikola Tesla's Moji Pronalasci (My Inventions), In: Naš Tesla (Our Tesla), Technical Science Monograph No. 18, Edited by R. J. Halaši, I. P. Ćosić and T. J. Halaši. University of Novi Sad Faculty of Technical Science, and Society for the Promotion of Science Novi Sad, pp. 127–176 (in English).
- Hong, F. T. (2007): Enigma ljudskog stvaralaštva: Skrivene poruke u knjizi Moji pronalasci Nikole Tesle, In: Tesla: Vizije, delo, zivot (Tesla: wizard, work and life), Edited by Miloslav Benišek, Đuro Κoruga, and Slobodan Pokrajac. Faculty of Machine Engineering, University of Belgrade, pp. 99-144 (Serbian translation of Ref. 2).
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Prof. Felix T. Hong
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Wayne State
University
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 Felix T. Hong. M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of physiology at Wayne State University since 1977. He established the Molecular Electronics Track for the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in 1988, and served as the Track Chair for four consecutive terms until he stepped down in 1992. He has also organized molecular electronics symposia for the Fine Particle Society (1988), and the Bioelectrochemical Society (1992). He has served on the panels of several federal agencies on matter related to molecular electronics and nanotechnology research. He currently serves on the editorial board of the following journals: Advanced Materials for Optics and Electronics, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics, and BioSystems. He was recipient of the Victor K. LaMer Award (American Chemical Society, 1976).
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